Political Quotes

“The Senator asked me about IPAB. It is not an iPad or an iPhone or whatever. I am sure Apple has nothing to do with it. Well, the administration, in response to a lot of concern about rationing, wrote an op-ed and sent it to many different publications and said, ``[T]he claims that the board will ration care are simply false.'' At the time, I repeated my concerns over and over again. Senator Kyl will remember those days in the Finance Committee. I think everybody left when I started my rant. And the health care reform law's potential to ration care--I made speech after speech--is not only IPAB; there is the CMS Innovation Center, the new authority granted to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, and finally IPAB, and that is not a toothpaste. At the time, the American public was told over and over that these provisions of the health care reform law would not result in the rationing of care, loss of access, or reduced quality. But once again the Medicare Actuary, Richard Foster--bravest man in the government-- and many others have noted that the kinds of payment reductions contemplated by IPAB will amount to a de facto rationing by reducing access to care. The Actuary has stated that the payment reductions in the law could ``jeopardize access to care for beneficiaries''--senior beneficiaries.…”